


You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart

by Segolène (SecretSegolene)



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, POV First Person, Reimagined Meeting, What-If, information asymmetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretSegolene/pseuds/Segol%C3%A8ne
Summary: In this timeline, Subaru remembers a little more, a little earlier. The assassin loses half the element of surprise and reconsiders his options.
Relationships: Sakurazuka Seishirou/Sumeragi Subaru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart

**Author's Note:**

> Long live the 2021 hype train. I thought my stories weren’t doing much sitting on my hard drive, so here we go. I still hope for happy endings.

“It’s you,” he whispered. 

I froze, not expecting recognition. 

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said smoothly, covering my discomfort with the usual injection of fluent, easy charm. “My name is Sakurazuka Seishirou.”

The boy smiled as if he wanted to cry. He accepted my hand and I helped him up from the station platform’s exposed stone floor. He brushed dust and small stones from the knees of his straight black trousers and clapped his hands together to dislodge what had settled in the folds of his leather gloves. 

“Is it getting cold enough for gloves already?” I remarked in a conversational tone. The boy blushed very slightly, and looked away. He looked to be locked in a difficult decision, at stalemate with another version of himself. 

“I’m sorry for my rudeness,” he said at last. “Thank you for helping me. I’m embarrassed that I fell.”

He took a breath, and looked me in the eye. His were a brilliant, unmistakeable shade of green. 

“My name is Sumeragi Subaru,” he continued, and then: “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

As a matter of fact, I later thought to correct him, I hadn’t known that. Not at that moment in time. But on that station platform with the chill of autumn just picking up and the noise of the crowd coming back into focus around us, my thoughts had stuttered to a blind and eerie halt. 

Subaru was apologetic. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “It was only recently, in fact, that I began to remember.” He wore a look of concern, which inexplicably stirred my irritation. Perhaps I was just feeling defensive. At least, that was the name that I chose to give to the creeping apprehension that had begun to shroud my instincts. 

“No,” I said, straightening up with an equally apologetic smile. “It was rude of me to assume. It was so long ago that we met, after all.”

Instead of agreeing, Subaru looked as if I had suddenly given him the answer to a question. If so, it was one that I couldn’t have known he had. 

“You’re right,” he murmured, focusing somewhere in the middle distance beside us, “It would have been quite a long time ago.”

If he truly remembered, and I had to consider that this could be the case, then his reaction was far too calm. It was totally out of place. More likely was... what? I had several ideas, each as baseless as the others. Too much about this meeting had progressed too far beyond my control. I decided, despite my electric instincts very violently objecting, to seize as much of it back as I could. 

I invited Subaru to join me for lunch. To my surprise and consternation, he readily accepted. 

We ate at a small nondescript place with a crude logo and a green plastic chicken hanging in the window of the shop. A bell chimed weakly as I opened the door. 

Subaru ordered an egg salad with oolong tea. I ordered a tofu dish and a bowl of soup. The waiter brought two glasses of ice water, and I thanked him for both of us. 

Subaru was quiet. It was likely his nature. I wanted to know why he wasn’t more cautious in the company of an effective stranger. If he hadn’t forgotten, I wanted to know why he wasn’t afraid of me. I recognised with some satisfaction that I had the freedom to begin and steer this conversation. I chose not to skirt the topic, though I wanted to lead without too blunt a question. 

“I’m surprised and delighted, you know,” I said after the waiter had left. “I can’t imagine what about me left such a strong impression that you would recognise me during a chance meeting like today.”

I sipped around the ice cubes in my glass. Subaru’s expression was open for reading, but his tone was cautious. 

“I agree that it must have been a deep impression that you left on me at the time,” he replied. “However, as I said, it was only recently that the memory came back to me. I had completely forgotten for a long time.”

“And what was it that reminded you?” I asked, clamping down the other question on my tongue, the one I most desperately wanted answered.

Subaru thought for a moment, chewing on a leaf. He seemed to be in genuine contemplation, suggesting that his apparently recent recollection wasn’t due to the shock of a specific event or a sudden realisation in full. 

“I suppose,” he said, “It must have been a dream. Or a series of dreams.”

“Oh?” I asked, hardly daring to probe any harder than I was already. 

“Yes, a dream. I started having the same dream repeatedly. I’m not sure when it must have started. I’m sure I must have forgotten a lot before I started remembering. More and more often, I would wake up and remember having had this dream. Eventually I told my grandmother about it.”

I reminded myself that it would be polite to feign interest in the more mundane but personal aspects of his story. 

“What sort of person is your grandmother?” I asked with benign curiosity. There was an acute hope that the family name he had given me was not simply a dull coincidence. 

“She’s the head of our family,” Subaru said, with a small smile of pride. “We work with spirits.”

Not a coincidence. I was quietly delighted. 

“That sounds like a tough job,” I commented. “Is your work busy?”

“Very busy,” Subaru said earnestly. “Though I enjoy it. Work is always interesting, and I’ve met incredible people.”

As he spoke, I found his bizarrely innocent manner somehow captivating. Perhaps it was simply hard to believe that someone with a personality like this had almost made it to adulthood without their sincerity being twisted or shattered by the whims of modern society. 

“It only becomes difficult if I start to fall behind in my classes,” Subaru continued. I finished my meal at a deliberate pace while he obligingly answered questions about his work, his teachers and the classes he attended. 

“Forgive me for asking,” I said eventually, “But surely you have no need to push yourself with extra schooling since you already have a job that you enjoy?”

Subaru’s eyes widened and the rest of his expression lit up as he shook his head and declared, “Definitely not. I can’t afford to slack off if I want to work with animals some day.”

An odd sensation bubbled up to the top of my throat. All of a sudden, for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I felt that I wanted to throw back my head and laugh. 

Instead I said settled for a wide grin and said: “Animals, you say? That’s a coincidence. I happen to run a clinic in Shinjuku.” 

I handed him my card and indulged in momentary self-satisfaction as I watched his expression shift from curiosity to amazement. 

“I’m the veterinarian,” I said. “Please stop by should you ever have a day off. I’m sure the animals would be pleased meet you.”


End file.
